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Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Gratitude Seen as Essential to Happiness

Gratitude ~ the emotion of thankfulness and joy in response to receiving a perceived gift ~ is an essential ingredient for living a good life. And when it comes to achieving this well-being, gender plays a role. It seems men are much less likely to feel and express gratitude than women.

So says Todd Kashdan, an associate professor of psychology at George Mason University, whose most recent paper was published online this week at the Journal of Personality. Kashdan says that if he had to name three elements essential for creating happiness and meaning in life they would be:

Gratitude

Meaningful relationships

Living in the present moment with an attitude of openness and curiosity.

"Previous studies on gratitude have suggested that there might be a difference in gender, and so we wanted to explore this further, and find out why. Even if it is a small effect, it could make a huge difference in the long run," says Kashdan.

In one study, Kashdan interviewed college-aged students and older adults, asking them to describe and evaluate a recent episode in which they received a gift. He found that:

Women compared with men reported feeling less burden and obligation and greater levels of gratitude when presented with gifts.

Older men reported greater negative emotions when the gift giver was another man.

"The way that we get socialized as children affects what we do with our emotions as adults," says Kashdan. "Because men are generally taught to control and conceal their softer emotions, this may be limiting their well-being."

About Gregory LeFever

Attributions

I Ching commentaries on my blog are from the classic The I Ching or Book of Changes, translated by Richard Wilhelm with a Forward by Carl Jung, Princeton University Press, 1950. By the way, when selecting entries for my blog, I don't "throw" anything to discover the hexagram - I simply open the book at random and see what's there.

Selections from the Tao Te Ching are from Stephen Mitchell's translation.